


Old Habits

by LurkerForAlways



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Canon Compliant, Cunnilingus, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hateno, I JUST LOVE THESE DORKS, I can't help it, I still think that's canon compliant, I've assumed a pre-calamity zelink item, Link doesn't have any additional memories after what we see in game, Post-Calamity, Vaginal Sex, and they come with a lot of trauma, gratuitous amounts of both tbh, zelda of course remembers all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:33:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29380692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LurkerForAlways/pseuds/LurkerForAlways
Summary: Link laughed, shocking her. “I should have guessed. Tell me, Princess—excuse me, tell me, Zelda—how often have we done this?” She shook her head, not understanding. “How often have you and I refused to talk about something because we were sure the other did not want to?”Ah, well.-The knight and the princess deal with the fact that Link can't remember. It's hard.
Relationships: Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 99





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Back again with everyone's favorite cocktail: angst and smut, this time with a dash of fluff for good measure. This has been sitting in my WIPs for too long which means I need to stop obsessing over how unhappy I am with it and just let it out into the world. 
> 
> Chapter two should be posted within the week. Dorks getting lucky, you love to see it.

For the first time, the words would not come.

Zelda sat there, underneath the tree, legs tucked beneath her, pen poised, thoughts whirring, pulse quaking, and the words would not come. On the other side of the pond, Link was stretched out, his fishing rod tilting perilously over the water from where he’d planted it in the mud. With his arms crossed behind him like a pillow, the Hero of Hyrule dozed like a cat in a sunbeam. He looked so peaceful, so at odds with her memories of him. Unhurried, unbothered and—dare she say it—rather lazy sprawled out like that in the middle of the afternoon. It warmed her and worried her in equal measure. No one was more deserving of such a reprieve from destiny, but the Link she knew had certainly never indulged like this. She wondered if her Link was hiding in that sleeping form somewhere, or if he had been shed like another skin, outgrown and discarded.

The journal remained empty in her lap. The words would not come. 

She used to speed through notebooks like this in days, drawing diagrams and taking notes and recording the mundanities of everyday life. There was no rhyme or reason, only a steady internal force urging her to put pen to paper, indifferent to continuity or narrative. She had scribbled constantly, and when she could not because she was riding or praying or sleeping, she was often considering how she might memorialize her thoughts on the page. As princess, she’d had access to the finest paper and the smoothest pens, using each without thought to scarcity, crossing out pages and spilling ink across her desk with the knowledge that another notebook, another jar of ink, would be on her shelf come morning. 

Perhaps that was why she could not write: she felt the scarcity of the resource acutely now. Link had pilfered this one from the shelves of her ruined bedroom. Its earliest pages bore her thoughts on the man himself, or at least those she’d had while she sat in that room with that specific notebook in front of her. She knew there were pages and pages of her thoughts on Link that had been lost to time, and mostly she was grateful for that given how sour and inaccurate her initial assumptions had turned out to be. Even rereading the short entries in the notebook on her lap made her warm with embarrassment. How little she knew then.

She had not written since Link had rescued her, though he’d shyly offered her this journal when they made camp that first evening. He admitted he had read through the pages she’d written, and at that both of their faces flushed, but Link insisted he had learned nothing he had not already known: that their initial relationship had been rocky, that they eventually reconciled their differences. “I promise I won’t ever open it again,” he finished with a solemnity that felt like a lifelong vow. She thanked him profusely for the gift—he accepted her gratefulness much more easily than the thanks she had lain at his feet earlier that day—and hugged the book to her chest like the treasure it was. But she did not feel the urge to write in it, had not felt the urge to write all that day, and instead basked in the presence of a familiar, unchanged object from her past. 

That night she considered his apology, his promise to allow her the privacy of unopened journals forevermore, and wondered at his memory. Why had he made such a solemn promise? Was it because he remembered, however vaguely and unformed the memories might be, that she had been vicious about the secrecy of her writings? Could he recall the moment early in his appointment when she’d found him glancing at the papers on her desk as he waited for her return from midday prayers? She had screamed so loudly that the entire castle had tiptoed around her for days afterward. She had not regretted it, though. Still did not, in fact. It had been one of the few times he’d truly earned one of her rebukes (even if he had not earned the degree of vitriol she ultimately spewed). He had hardly ever given her the opportunity for righteous anger, perfect knight that he was. Instead, she had been forced to lash out over petty things, things that in truth bothered her little, in order to sustain the fires of her contempt. And such anger, while nourishing, always tasted of ash.

The words would not come and it scared her. So much of the life she’d left 100 years ago was gone. She had known that walking into the castle, assumed it and accepted it easily in exchange for her country. But she had not considered that she might lose herself in the process, that she might emerge as unrecognizable to her former self as the ruined lands she had saved. And yet, she could not know how different she truly was because the measuring stick upon which she’d been relying—Link’s memories of her, his intimate knowledge of her person—turned out to be nothing of the sort. He was the same and he was different and she could not figure out how to parse it right because she could not figure out herself. And the crushing truth of that meant she suddenly knew nothing, nothing. She had no touchstone for this new world and was instead floating adrift without the means to orient herself. She clung desperately to the parts of Link that she knew endured: the blue of his eyes, his skill with the sword, and his devotion to her own safety. It was enough to stave off a full existential crisis, but for how long?

Link slept on, stretching his arms out from behind his head and putting them below his cheek as he turned to his side. As he moved, his boot kicked the already tilting fishing rod, causing the whole thing to collapse into the water. Its fall stirred him none. Zelda smiled sadly, thinking again of the boy she had known who had never been afforded the luxury of pond-adjacent catnaps.

She unfolded herself from beneath her tree and made to save the fishing rod from complete submergence. The wind conspired to push the rod out of reach, so she did not have time to cuff her pants before splashing into the water’s edge and reaching out to grasp the rod with her fingertips. She nearly stumbled but caught herself just in time to see Link open his eyes and laugh.

“Going for a swim, Princess?”

“I’m trying very hard not to do that, actually,” she answered with a grin. “You nearly lost your fishing rod, Sir Knight.”

He shrugged, sitting up and rolling his shoulders. “The pond’s not so deep. I could have waded in and grabbed it when I’d woken.”

“And I saved you the trouble.” She stuck the rod back into the sandbank before sitting down next to him. When he did not respond, she bumped his shoulder. “Anyway, you’re welcome. I guess we won’t be having fish tonight.”

He bumped back. “I guess not. Thankfully, we’ve some provisions inside that I hope will suffice, your highness.” He yawned, again in that unhurried way that was so unfamiliar. “How was your afternoon, Princess?”

“I told you to call me Zelda.”

He shrugged again. “Old habits.” 

“Old habits, indeed,” she said, voice wistful. “You never were good at it. Calling me Zelda, I mean.” He raised his eyebrow but did not respond. She wondered if he wanted her to continue down this road or to stop it completely. She could never tell if it helped him or hurt him to know about the Link that came before. 

They sat in silence for a while, both aware that her mention of the past had knocked loose something that each usually kept locked away. It had felt good to finally speak of the knight she’d lost, to remember him, but she could hardly savor the feeling before guilt washed over her. She had promised herself that she wouldn’t inflict the old Link upon the one who sat beside her. How unfair and how cruel. She was determined to allow Link the opportunity to dictate the terms of this discussion, assuming he ever wanted to have it. Perhaps he never would. She could make peace with that; it was the least she could do. 

But then Link’s voice broke into her reverie. “Is it hard for you to talk about him? Or, I guess, me, but a me that I can’t remember?” He was looking at her intently, head titled, face steeled for hard truths. She sputtered for a moment, completely unprepared for the question. It was so straightforward, so bold, that it nearly took her breath. The Link she had known would never have broached this topic. He would have waited until the end of the world before he asked her to be vulnerable.

“I… no, it’s not hard for me to talk about it. Or perhaps it is a little bit. But not so much that I don’t want to. I just… I thought you didn’t.”

He laughed then, which was another shock. “I should have guessed. Tell me, Princess—excuse me, tell me, Zelda—how often have we done this?” She shook her head, not understanding. “How often have you and I refused to talk about something because we were sure the other did not want to?”

Ah, well. “Near the end it didn’t happen that often. But in the beginning… all the time. I assumed you hated me because you would not talk to me. But you would not talk to me because you assumed I preferred it that way. And it took an assassination attempt to fix that.

Link laughed again; this time she joined him. Something in her seemed to unclench, but just as quickly something in her trembled with grief. Communicating like this was better, surely. But she also missed the blundering knight who was constantly and inaccurately presuming her thoughts and preferences. That Hero of Hyrule had been such a dumb boy sometimes. And goddesses, did she miss him.

“Let’s try this again,” Link said. He breathed deeply before beginning. “It is hard for me—very hard for me—to know I lived a life I cannot remember. To know that you have memories of me that I cannot recall. I think about it often and wonder how different I am from the man you knew. Sometimes I want to remember so badly I want to wake you in the middle of the night to tell me all I missed. And other times I curse the aching hole in my heart that is impossible to ignore when I’m with you. Before we met, or re-met, it never hurt this badly. But I can feel something missing in me and I don’t know what to do. I both want to know and I don’t want to know and its burning me up to live with both feelings at once.”

He was looking at his hands, arms slung around his knees. Zelda had hardly breathed, was looking at him so intensely she thought she might shatter if he did turn to look back at her. And yet, he would not. And she would not ask that of him. 

“Having you back has been painful, but also… I don’t know how to explain it, but I feel more whole, too. Which perhaps explains why the missing piece of my memory feels so acute now. I didn’t know what I was missing, but now I do. That’s been very hard.”

His voice had begun to waver and crackle; Zelda noted how he breathed deeply, attempting to regain control. “Now it’s your turn,” he finally said, eyes still on his fingertips. “Tell me, Zelda. Do you want to talk about it? I want to stop assuming and actually know.”

What an idea. It terrified her to tell him how she really felt, to hurt him more than her very presence was already hurting him. But he wanted the truth. How could she deny him that?

“I feel a lot of the things you do,” she offered slowly. “I stop myself dozens of times a day from asking if you remember this thing or another. I think all the time about why you remember certain things that you’ve told me you do, and why other moments are missing. And you, here, with me, is the dream that sustained me for a hundred years, and yet sometimes I feel such grief for the man I used to know. I never know how to think of him, how to give him the respect he deserves. Is it fair to think of him as distinct from you; is it fair not to?”

She swallowed a sob, determined not to cry. 

“And Goddess, I feel shame and guilt, so much guilt. I feel shame for not being immediately happy with the you that met me in the castle fields, for sometimes cursing you for not remembering. And I feel guilt because it is all my fault. I let you die at the battle of Fort Hateno, and if I had been stronger, better, more clever, more devoted, perhaps I could have saved both of us this pain.”

Link shook his head at that, his face still angled toward the ground. He began to echo her words. “I feel guilt because it is all my fault. I was not strong enough to survive the battle. I condemned you to a hundred years of torture endured in solitude.” He sighed. “You talk about shame, Princess, but I feel it too. I am so ashamed that you, here, next to me, has caused me such pain, even as it brings me unspeakable joy. I am weak, ungrateful, unworthy.”

Alas, her tears were not to be deterred, not after he’d said all that. They began to flow freely down her face, warping the sharp shape of his pain. And still, Link would not look at her, his eyes trained on his hands. But he had been bold, had told her how he felt, had asked her to do the same, had lain his shame and guilt at her feet for her scrutiny. Could she not be bold too?

She reached out and grabbed one of Link’s hands, pressing it between her own. “Will you look at me, Link?” she asked, voice quiet as the wind.

It took him a moment, but he did. He never could deny her anything. His eyes were glassy, and upon meeting hers his own tears began to fall. She laughed and brought one hand up to his face, thumbing them away. He laughed too.

“We are pathetic, aren’t we?” she asked. 

“Very.” He brought a hand up to cover hers where she had been wiping tears, stilling her. “You know I don’t think any worse of you for any of that? Please know that, Zelda. I grieve for him too.” 

Zelda nodded, the tears slipping down more forcefully than ever. She swallowed the thickness in her throat. “How terrible it is to cause each other such pain.”

“So terrible,” he said, nodding into her palm. “I’m jealous of him too, you know. He loved you so much. I can feel it every time I look at you, when I hear your voice. It’s dizzying, to feel such love without the memories to explain how I got here.” He pulled her hand down from his cheek and intertwined their fingers. “You must feel something similar.”

“I do and I don’t,” she said, putting words to something she hadn’t quite been able to explain to herself. “So much of what I loved about him remains with you. And what’s different isn’t unwelcome, it’s just… unfamiliar. A shock I haven’t yet gotten used to.” She flashed her eyes at him, blushing slightly. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t be able to.”

“You think so?” he asked, and she wondered at the tone of his voice. Was he matching her own teasing lilt or was that voice borne of something more earnest, more desperate? 

She looked up at him then, saw the desire in his eyes and let the warmth of it settle in her stomach, let it make room for itself amongst the guilt and shame and grief that had been eating her up inside. She couldn’t evict the unwelcome emotions just like that, but she could begin to edge them out with the heat of this Link’s love. She could allow herself to feel it, to stoke it, even as she tended the duplicate flame that she felt still for the knight she used to know. She felt certain there was room for both if she could just find the space. 

“I do,” she said, serious as could be. She pressed the softest, gentlest kiss to the corner of his mouth, before hopping up, gathering her notebook and the fishing rod, and making her way inside. She felt the heat of Link’s gaze prickle her neck until the door was closed behind her. Old Link or new, the knight never was able to avert his gaze when she was walking away.

\--

It took him a few days to work up the nerve to ask her. “Is it time we talk about him?” Link asked, the words leaving him in a frantic rush. They were sitting at the kitchen table, Zelda finishing her meal several minutes after Link, who, in typical fashion, had devoured his in mere minutes. She had been in the process of bringing her fork to her mouth, but she stilled at his words and lowered it, eyes trained on his. She brought her napkin daintily to her mouth, and Link thought he could hear the whirring of her brain if he listened hard enough. Finally, she nodded, pushing her plate toward the center of the table, no longer hungry. 

“I’m going to follow you’re lead on this,” she started, keeping careful watch of the way his faced shifted. “There’s only one way for the flow of information to go, so I want you to be sure you know what you’re asking. I won’t be able to take anything back.”

He scraped his fingers through his hair, rolling his eyes. “I appreciate your concern, but I know all that. I’ve been obsessing over that since I woke from the shrine.”

“I said it for me as much as for you,” she snapped back, unwilling to keep the cold out of her voice. “I know it’s hard that I am the gatekeeper for all of this. I can only imagine. But it’s hard for me too. The responsibility to do justice to the truth without sharing something you may not want to know is frightening.”

“You’re right, you’re right, I’m sorry.” He pulled his hair out of its tie and reknotted it, a nervous habit, a familiar one. It softened her heart a bit. “I want to be ready for this so badly, but perhaps I want it too much. I don’t want it to be so fraught.” He bit his lip, his face betraying the shame her words had aimed to inflict. She regretted them now. “I wish I could race through it, could wake up one morning with it all fit neatly back into place. Instead, we have to do this.” She nodded at his words, her own shame mounting as he spoke. “What was it you said, Zelda? How terrible it is to cause each other such pain.” 

The smile he gave her was devastating, heartbreaking. She couldn’t look at it without hating herself, so she looked away. “Let’s start over,” she said, standing to pick up both of their dinner plates and place them on the counter. “We’ll clean up from dinner, get ready for bed, take a quiet evening stroll, and try again.”

He agreed quickly, awed by the simple brilliance of what she offered. In no time at all, he was following her to the pond. She had brought a blanket, which she laid out near the shoreline and upon which she sat herself down. The moon was bright, so she could see the way his eyebrow raised as she settled in. “I didn’t want to get grass stains on my nightgown,” she offered, shrugging.

“I thought we were taking a stroll,” he said, sinking down next to her. “But I guess this will do.”

“Thank goodness you approve,” she said, eyes twinkling in the moonlight. They sat in that comfortable silence for a while, neither wanting to ruin it, before Link’s desperation for knowledge reasserted itself and he sighed, preparing to break the serenity.

But Zelda did first. “Let’s start simple,” she offered, whispering as if she might wake the whole town. “How about an anecdote, nothing serious? Of course, it’s up to you, but I just thought it might be easier to have some… guidance? It was unfair of me earlier to imply I required exact parameters when you are going in much blinder than I am.” 

He took her hand, grateful beyond words for her kindness, for somehow knowing what he needed. “And it was unfair of me to lash out at you earlier. We’re even.” She squeezed his hand. “I like that idea, but I would like to add one parameter if you’ll allow me the indulgence?” She rolled her eyes but smiled, prodding him on. He took a deep breath. “Can it be from the end? I know it might be easier to go linearly but I can’t help wanting to know what we were like at our very best.”

She leaned in close to him then, took his hand and wrapped it around her shoulder. “At our best?” she mused, considering her favorite memories, the ones that had sustained her through the last century. It took a moment before she noticed how Link had stilled at her easy movements to bring them closer. “Oh Goddess, I’m sorry, is this okay?” she asked, already shrugging her shoulder out from beneath his arm. “I got caught up, I’m so sorry.”

Link shook the daze from his head and then pulled her back toward him, quick as he could. “Of course it’s okay,” he said, words spilling out of his mouth. “I had just… I had forgotten how good that could feel. How right.” She had let herself lean back into him then, but at his words she hid her face in her hands. 

“You can’t do that to me,” she complained between the gaps in her fingers. “I’ll get whiplash. To go so quickly from being sure you hate me to you saying things like that.” She picked her face up, the moonlight casting the flush in her cheeks a soft purple. “You will be the death of me.”

“I should hope not. That would make me quite a failure as your appointed knight.” Her cheeks began to fade back to mere rosiness. He lamented the change. It had been fun to watch her get worked up, to catch her off balance. 

“Just, for the record and all that, you can do that anytime you want. I promise not to let the shock of my good luck render me stock-still again.” Zelda’s cheeks warmed and she murmured something that could have been an insult or a kindness, he wasn’t sure.

She was silent for a few moments, thinking on what story to tell, when she turned to him with a sheepish grin. “The best stories—or my favorites anyway—always ended rather…” Goddesses, this was embarrassing. “Suggestively. Especially when we were at our best, as you say.” Link laughed heartily and she shoved him for it, though it only served to make him laugh harder. “If you’ll have trouble taking such a story seriously, however, I’ll keep searching my memory for something less risqué.” 

“Don’t go to such trouble on my account, Zelda,” he said, quieting his laughter. “You clearly have one—perhaps several—in mind. Tell me.”

She was still miffed about his reaction, but she couldn’t help wanting to share one story in particular; it was the one which felt truest to the two of them. And she had to be fair: the fact that so much of what happened at the end veered toward explicit was funny. They had been such teenagers then, desperate for the other’s touch, indulging in one another at every opportunity. 

She relented and finally began. “You used to bring me flowers. Silent Princesses, of course." You’d leave them in places where I’d only find them later once you had left my rooms." The memory of them flashed behind her eyelids. "You hid them on the highest shelves in my study, or would tuck them gently beneath the coverlet of my bed, careful not to crush the petals. And yet, you denied your involvement categorically and would not confess. Not even after some exceedingly persuasive entreaties I may have made.” She powered through the blush that she could feel burning down the column of her neck. “You were always much too stubborn to fall for such traps. And I was always much too starved for your touch to withstand your counter maneuvers and your own brand of persuasion.”

She worried her teasing had gone too far, what with the silence between them stretching on and on. But then, his voice, low and dark. “My own brand of persuasion?” he asked.

She smiled Cheshire wide. “Yes." Normally she would falter first, but this was a different Link, one starved as Zelda had been a century ago, only more so. She pushed her advantage, letting the moment grow and bend. She felt Link’s grasp around her shoulder pull her in closer and she felt certain that he would break, felt secure with the knowledge that she herself had gained a patience she had not possessed before her time in the sanctum.

“Persuasion how?” The words left Link slowly, hanging in the air like a dare.

“You must know, Link.” 

“I do not.” His breathing was ragged. She loved the sound, had not realized how much she missed it.

“No guesses, even?” 

The world tilted and suddenly she was laying on her back under the stars, Link's arms caged around her. “You’re teasing me, Princess. Stop.”

She brought a hand to his face, slow and sure, like she had all the time in the world. And she did, she realized. She vowed to make use of it. “I told you to call me Zelda.”

“Zelda, tell me.”

She clucked her tongue. “You dare give me an order?”

His face was so close now that his bangs were sweeping along her forehead in time with his labored breathing. With gentle care, she brushed them behind his ear, allowing herself to emit a soft sigh. She had missed this. Missed him. “Yes, I dare.” His voice was growing brittle, crackling at the intensity of his desire, his need to know.

“Foolish Knight,” she scolded, “all fire and no follow through. What recourse do you have if I won’t comply?” At that, she kissed him, gentle, light, letting the implication of her words slip through his skin. “A word of advice: an order is no good if there isn’t any bite behind it.” He trembled; she sported a wolfish grin.

“I hate to even give you details after you’ve been so impertinent, but it started much like this, you know. I tried the very same tricks then as now, but you had seen them, you could withstand them. I tried to take advantage of you, but you’d had too much experience.” She brought her hand to his shirt hem and began exploring the expanse it covered. Just as toned as she remembered, just as unforgiving beneath the gentle press of her fingertips. At her touch, he clenched his jaw, attempting a stubbornness she did not think he could maintain. “Thankfully, you, sir, are out of practice.” 

But then he barked out a breathless laugh and she wondered if she had miscalculated. “You promised a stroll, but here we sit. You promised a story and yet you stopped halfway through. Must you be so withholding, Princess? Wouldn’t it just be easier to follow instructions?”

“I told you to call me Zelda.”

“That you did,” he replied, placing a chaste kiss to the corner of her mouth. And then he sat up and left her lying on the blanket, her body cold where his had so recently been pressed against it. He leaned back on his elbows, watching her catch her breath. “The way I see it, there are three ways forward here. You yield, finish the story, and perhaps I try and recreate some of the more persuasive elements for you once you’ve acquiesced. Or, on the other hand, I could yield, and you could have your way with me. But, while I’ll admit I know little about the past, that seems rather unlikely, doesn’t it? Uncharacteristic?

“So that leaves us with the third way: we both hold firm until time immemorial, and you never get to relive some favorite memories. And while you know what you’re missing, I, perhaps thankfully, do not. A curse in many cases, but a blessing here. You will not outlast me.”

Zelda had tried to quiet her racing heart, but his words cut straight through her, stoked something within her that was desperate and wanting, had been that way for the last ten decades. And from the way he looked at her, he knew what his words had done, could see their effect even in the dim moonlight. It would be pure anathema to give in as he suggested, but wouldn’t it also feel so very, very good? To yield to him now like she had yielded so many times before.

This was not her Link, and yet it was. At the very core of him lay the same stubborn, devoted swordsman whom she had hated upon meeting and grown to love with abandon. This iteration of him was not informed by the same memories, had not developed the same habits in response to the same stimuli, but he was still hers in all the ways that mattered. And if she gave in now, perhaps she could be his again.

She laid her forearm across her eyes, still flat on her back where he’d left her. “How do you do this to me?” she asked, speaking more to herself than to him. “I thought I had learned patience and yet you’ve undone me. Things change, but they do not. Not this.”

Link laid himself beside her and used a hand to smooth her hair behind her ear. “Is the familiarity not comforting?” he asked quietly.

She shook her head. “It’s not that. Loving you that hard—this hard—losing you for so long. A heart can only take so much. I welcome the familiarity as the priceless blessing it is, but Goddess I had forgotten how much it hurts to love you this much. 

He nodded at her, his hand still petting with such tenderness. “Perhaps that is the ache I feel, then?” he asked after a moment. “I was sure it was because I couldn’t remember, but maybe it’s nothing more than feeling the full intensity of what I feel for you. To know you have such a hold over my being, my happiness. 

She closed her eyes and allowed herself a moment to relish the way his hand traced the contours of her ear, the way his fingers slipped through the locks of her hair. “And, what’s more, you had to forget and then you had to remember. Or half-way remember. I’m sorry I put you through that.”

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault, and either way I’m not bitter. I’m not sure I could have done the things I needed to do before I saved you if I knew what it’d mean to see you again. I would have raced straight to the castle, no sword, no blessings, no training, no divine beasts. And I would have lost.”

They lay like that for a while, until Zelda did what some part of her always knew she would: “I yield, Sir Knight. I’ll finish the story.”

He smiled and her heart sang and broke and mended again at the sweetness. “Why don’t we finish the story inside?”


	2. Chapter 2

He led her up the hill, through the door, and to his bed. He laid her down gently, hands stroking along the column of her neck, fingertips along the contours of her jaw. The onslaught of his affection, of his touch, of his devotion was making her dazed. He brought one of her hands up to his lips and pressed kiss after kiss to her fingers, her wrist, her palm. “Okay,” he said, sitting at the edge of the bed, her hand still caged between his own. “Tell me about my brand of persuasion.”

But before she could say anything, he leaned down and kissed her, slow, languorous, her breath catching. It was over too quickly, and she tipped her head up as he pulled away, desperate for more. “Was it like that?” he asked, bringing her hand back up to his cheek to lean against it. “Perhaps it was more frantic, a defensive maneuver in response to your own attacks.” He looked at her expectantly and it took her a moment to realize he had asked a question and was waiting patiently for an answer. She breathed rasping breaths.

“You always had to be—we were always fast. There was never any time, and we were always worried about getting caught or attending to other responsibilities. But you were always gentle, always slow where you could be, where it mattered.” He smiled at that, pride welling up at actions he could not remember but felt true to form.

“Poor Zelda,” Link fussed, eyes never leaving hers. “No one more deserving of undivided attention, of diligent tenderness.” He placed another kiss on the back of her hand. “But we have the time now, do we not? Perhaps we should make use of it.”

She was nodding before he’d finished the sentence, and he laughed and bent down to kiss her again, his lips restrained but pulsing with the promise of something more. “I shall rely on what little memory I have, but feel free to chime in and remind me what you like,” he whispered against her lips.

And then he was gone, moving himself to the end of the bed, hand on each ankle. She opened her legs at once on muscle memory alone. Immediately Link’s index finger slid up the line of her leg, snuck under the hem of her nightgown, and pressed gently at the apex of her thighs.

She moaned. It had been so long.

“Already soaked through?” he clucked, his eyes gleaming. That her own pleasure excited him so thoroughly sent another wave right through her. “I must admit, I had been looking forward to working you into a frenzy, but it seems you’re already there.” He dipped one finger under the fabric, sliding the tip along the slickness. She moaned again. “But I bet I can still work you higher, get you more frenzied. What do you think, Princess, am I up to the challenge?”

She could not have answered his question if she had tried, but thankfully he did not seem to require one. He removed his finger and popped it into his mouth, eyes never leaving Zelda’s. “I can’t wait until my mouth is on you,” he said, licking the finger clean. “But some preliminary matters first: that nightgown has to go.” Still at the end of the bed, he leaned his body over hers, his hands sliding under her nightgown and up her thighs. When his hands reached her hips and began to expose her stomach, he paused, climbing over her, and began lavishing the skin with kisses. She wiggled against him, desperate for his lips lower, lower, as he’d promised, but he would not be deterred. He kissed at the hemline of her panties, darted his tongue into her navel. Inch by inch, the nightgown exposed more, and Link seemed keen to lavish each inch with attention.

It was too much to watch him move up her body in the wrong direction. “I need more,” she breathed, her first cogent words in minutes. He looked up at her, feigning confusion, before tucking a finger under her panties and teasing her again with his fingertips. “Is this what you need, Zelda?” She nodded, her hands fisting in the sheets on either side. “I thought we had agreed on slow and steady,” he said, his finger sliding back and forth but no deeper. She tried to thrust into his hand, but he used the other to stop her hips from leaving the bed. He tutted at her, pulling his finger out completely. “We go at my pace, Zelda. You yielded.”

She nearly sobbed but nodded, desperate to have his touch on her again. It was exquisite, divine torture. Perhaps this Link had learned new tricks after his time in the shrine, or perhaps the old one had never had the time or temerity to employ these tactics. Either way, she could see a future in which this man could wrap her around his finger—literally—and she’d beg for the privilege.

When he reached the underside of her breasts, he seemed to tire of exposing her skin slowly and helped her rip the garment over her head. Before he returned to settle back on top of her, she pulled at his own clothes and helped him pull off his t-shirt and shorts, leaving him in just his briefs. She drank in the sight of him, cataloguing new scars and appreciating familiar muscles. He smiled before settling back on top of her. “Like what you see?” he asked. She nodded with a fervor that would have shamed her had her brain had any capacity for something other than pleasure.

He gazed at her body adoringly, which was clad in panties and nothing more. He kissed her sternum, before laying his head against it for a moment, his face tipped toward hers. He seemed to remember something, pulling himself up so that his face was even with hers again. “I’ve hardly kissed you,” he murmured before parting his lips and pulling her into a searing kiss. Soon enough, though, she was rutting against him—she could feel his length against her now, and it stoked something in her that made her frantic, needy. She felt the vibrations of a laugh. “So impatient, dear Zelda. We are in no rush, are we?”

“Perhaps we should be,” she breathed, rolling her hips against his again. He heaved in a serrated breath and pulled away.

He palmed a breast, took a nipple between his fingers. “Did we not agree that I was to set the pace?” He squeezed gently and Zelda keened, arching into his touch. “Did you not yield?” She nodded as he pinched harder, the pain somehow ratcheting up the pleasure. “I would like to hear you say it though,” he said as he rolled the bud between his fingers. He planted a kiss on the other breast, just to the right of where she’d like his mouth. “Will you say it for me, Zelda?”

She wanted to be stubborn, but her body had other ideas. “I yield—oh!” Just like that his mouth was on her, sucking and swirling. Pleasure was coiling, building at her core. Without meaning to, she began to rut against him again.

He bit her then, lightly but enough to hurt, and the pain was somehow steadying even as it shot a spike of molten pleasure through her. “My. Pace. Zelda. Follow instructions, and perhaps I’ll reward you.” He returned to her breast, spending time on one and then the other until she was breathless, near tears with the intensity of the pleasure and yet it was hardly enough, not even close. She yearned for release, but Link was not done yet, and in fact seemed to be enjoying how much she writhed beneath his lips, how she became more desperate as each second passed.

And it turned out the bites were not just to punish her disobedience. He nibbled at the skin along the underside of her breasts, lapping and sucking before bringing the delicate skin between his teeth and nipping gently. Each time he did so—and there was no pattern to follow, so each one was a surprise—she’d groan out Link’s name, or something that sounded like it, and she could feel him smile against her skin.

Finally, finally, he began to work downward, his cock rubbing along the side of her body as he moved himself further and further down. She trembled with the discipline it took not to arch into him, to feel the sweet relief of some sort of friction. He kissed along her stomach until he moved himself further down, nosing himself between her thighs. She thought she might faint at the torture of the anticipation.

“You’ve done well,” he said, his lips so close to where she needed them that she could feel his breath, through the thin cotton between them. “Perhaps a reward is in order, hm?” And then he licked a stripe along her, his tongue laving at the wetness of the fabric. She was sure she was moaning but she couldn’t hear anything, every cell within her focused on the feeling of Link between her thighs. When Link finally hooked his fingers into the garment and pulled it down, he had to reposition himself so that Zelda went several seconds without his touch and it made her whine.

“Shh, shh” he soothed, putting his face right back where it was, now completely unhindered. His tongue darted into her and she shrieked at the intrusion, at the deliciousness of it. He licked up and down, using one hand to hold her lips apart. He sucked right at her center, just briefly and just once, but she thought she might be able to come from that alone. And yet, Link was not going to be so giving just yet. “I could do this forever,” he breathed, kissing against her thigh as he caught his breath. She realized her fingers were tangled in his hair—when had that happened? “Maybe I should,” he mused, his fingertips tapping against her inner thigh, “edging you closer and closer to release but reeling you back at the last moment.”

“Please,” she breathed. “Please, I need more, please more.” She took her hands out of his hair and brought them to tangle in her own, pulling at it. He laughed at her pleas, kissed her crease as she continued to breathlessly beg for mercy. It was all too much and yet not enough. She ached for more, more.

Perhaps her pleas had had some effect, though, because she soon felt a finger at her entrance. It slipped in easily given how worked up she was, and Link groaned at that. “I thought I’d licked you clean, and yet somehow you seem wetter than I could imagine.” He slipped another finger into her, thrusting them both in and out at a leisurely pace. “Did you feel how easy that was, Zelda?” and then a third finger was in her, and all were curling toward a particular point that promised something closer to release, something tangible.

On the third pass of his fingers, he finally hit that spot and tears were streaming down her face it felt so good. And yet, he would not move any faster, but kept the same steady rhythm that had her crying at the pleasure of it, but that she knew could not push her over the edge. She considered begging him, but her mind was so electrified, she didn’t know if she could find the words.

He had paused the ministrations of his mouth as he thrust into her, but soon enough he began again, paying special attention to her clit in a way that made her see stars. She was getting closer, so close, but still he refused to move fast enough to bring her relief. He sucked on her clit for a moment and her vision blurred. “I don’t understand you, Zelda," he said, and she could hear the smirk in his voice. It felt like he was speaking to her from far away and underwater. “I need you to speak words, darling.”

She’d been babbling and she didn’t even know. He slowed his fingers down, as if that might be what she had been asking for, the bastard. She swallowed a sob as her orgasm faded further into the distance. “Link, I am yours, I am yours, please, please.” At her words, he restarted his thrusting at a more insistent pace. She would have fainted with relief if her whole body hadn’t been on fire.

“You’ve been so good, dearest. I think you earned this.” His mouth returned to her with new vigor. That, coupled with his thrusting, was too much to withstand now that he’d settled on a sufficient rhythm. He sucked at her clit, for one, two, three seconds, and then suddenly she was leaping into an abyss and landing in wave after wave of pleasure and Link was still there, licking and thrusting and coaxing her through each rise and fall. She had never come like this, with such intensity and such release. Finally, sparks of overstimulation made her squirm away, even as Link took one last swipe at her with his tongue. “Sorry,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “you just taste so good.”

He laid his cheek against her thigh as she caught her breath. “Goddesses, Link,” she breathed, over and over. She could feel his smile against her skin, and though she could not find the energy to lift her head, she let her hands skim down her body to rest gently in his hair. They lay like that for a moment until Zelda felt the boy begin to inch back into position between her thighs. “No, no,” she complained, “come up here.” She managed to lift herself to her elbows and caught Link’s gaze. He hesitated, selfless to a fault, interested in getting her off again before he’d even taken off his undergarments. She couldn’t have that. “Listen, I will be having you do that again—and soon, don’t you worry—but right now I want _you._ ”

He could hardly deny her, not when the crushing tightness of his briefs was begging for attention. Not when her voice was heavy with desire for _him_.

He made his way back up her body, shucking his final article of clothing off in the process, and pressed himself against her at every possible point of contact. Foreheads, noses, lips, chests. The feeling of her against him, of him against her, the slickness, the heat, was enough to fully reignite Zelda’s need and served to make Link tremble against her. Finally, finally, she had caught the boy off-kilter, and she pressed her advantage, rolling him onto his back.

“I’m sorry, my love, but we’re not testing my patience this time, alright?” she asked, lining herself up. He nodded, and she lowered herself down and they both sighed in unison as their bodies fully met. Zelda kissed Link, softly, in time with a slow rhythm that Link was already having trouble acquiescing to. She would relent to his pace momentarily—she could hardly keep herself from going at him with her full strength—but she wanted to savor this. It was only in her wildest dreams that she could have imagined having this, having him again. Zelda had lived through so much pain, so much suffering, but look at what the Goddess had given her: A boy—a perfect boy—spread out beneath her, his finger reaching down to pleasure her, his lips leaving kisses against her collar bone in between desperate invocations of her name.

She was afraid her sentimentality would impede her passion, but the latter was coming back in full force now that Link was stroking her _just there_. And then she was speeding up and he was meeting her thrust for thrust and the two of them we’re rushing toward something that would ruin them, consume them, and they welcomed it desperately. She got there first, but he followed quickly after, spurred on by the clenching muscles of her orgasm. She kissed him through it until he was laying boneless beneath her, fully spent.

At some point Zelda rolled off Link, cleaned up, and brought the two of them cups of tea before climbing back into bed. Link hadn’t complained, but only because she’d yet to redon her nightgown, and Link was happy to watch her bustle around his kitchen like that for as long as she wanted. Lifetimes.

When she finally made it back into bed, head against Link’s chest, she found she couldn’t help herself. “You know,” she said, “I may have yielded, but I never _did_ finish the story.”

She couldn’t see Link’s face, but she could hear the smile in his voice. “Now that you mention it, you did not. Do enlighten me, Zelda.”

She laughed, placing a single kiss at his sternum. “I think I need just a little more persuading.”


End file.
